time for a new plan

Today, I admitted defeat. I've been getting up at 5 a.m. to get an hour's writing in before the dayjob takes over. It's been working okay (when I'm disciplined enough not to check my email, that is), but it's been chilly enough that I've been working from bed to keep warm. This morning, however,1 it was too cold to even THINK about sitting up at 5 a.m. For that matter, it was actually too cold to move. I tested the air with a single ear, but quickly tucked my head back under the blankets when I instantly lost all sensation in said exposed ear. Consequently, there was no writing this morning.

So, time for a new plan.

Buggered if I know what it will be, though.

In the meantime, my crazy-talented brother (one of my crazy-talented brothers, to be more precise) has written a game for the iphone: it's called AAA Gun Club.

My mother tells me she's been using it to tease amuse the cats: they look for the spent cartridges which they can hear falling to the floor. Hours of fun for the whole family! (Don't let my irreverance fool you. When I googled last night it was ranking among the top downloads of iTunes UK store. I'm just not entirely sure what to tell you because I don't have an iPhone. But I'm not bitter about that, not in the least, oh no, why do you ask?)

  1. coldest night in April in 52 years, I'm told — I haven't googled to check [↩]

30 April 2009 @ 20:16 | 4 Comments

INTERNET!

And the lord said let there be light Deb insisted, and dug in her heels, and got angry, and did the deadly calm trick, and finally got obstreperous and continuously demanded internet: and there was light until the telecommunications companies finally gave in just to shut her up, and there was internet.

And it was gooooooooooooood.

(Right, off to the dayjob, who have been very understanding about my need to stay home (only for the technicians to say, I kid you not, "Don't know why they bothered having us drop by, you're already connected. Honestly."))

(And just as I typed that, the heavens have opened up and dumped the southern ocean over my flat. Frak.)

28 April 2009 @ 9:45 | 1 Comment

how difficult is it? really?

A snap of the lunch menu at the nearby cafe the other day. I draw your attention particularly to the entry a little over halfway down the board.

oh my goodness, somebody give that chicken a blanket!

oh my goodness, somebody give that chicken a blanket!

Weep, my friends, for the dumb is winning.

27 April 2009 @ 18:58 | 8 Comments

it's good to be king a slow loris

Today, I give you links that appeared back to back in my feed reader.

  1. May It Please The Court (link courtesy Leigh Dragoon)
  2. A rendition of "Stand By Me" by an international ensemble cast of street musicians:

    (link courtesy Ellen Datlow)

    (This video was so awesome I immediately looked up their other songs released through the Song Around The World project, and then promptly pre-ordered the CD from amazon.)

  3. And, finally, a slow loris being tickled:

    (link courtesy Ellen Datlow)

Dorval (Julia Kent — Delay)

25 April 2009 @ 10:39 |

but now it's full of evil clowns

Last night, on a whim inspired by a co-worker's recommendation, I saw Vigilantelope's "Tale of the Golden Lease".

When the lights came up on the opening dance sequence, I knew I was going to like the show. But from Pluto's first line, I knew I was going to love it. And, oh, how right I was.

Easily the best $20 I've spent all month. In fact, easily the best $20 I've spent in a long, long time.1

a little gift of my genetic inheritance

a little gift of my genetic inheritance

See that swollen bruise discolouring the middle phalanx of my middle finger? That's from a burst blood vessel. What, you might ask, did I do to burst a blood vessel so thoroughly? The answer, rather surprisingly and inexplicably, is NOTHING AT ALL.

I kid you not. Sitting on the tram, hands resting innocuously in my lap, when all of a sudden there's a maddening itch and I look down and the middle finger is bright red and bruising before my eyes. It's a little trick I inherited from my mother. I suppose I could put a positive spin on it, and call it a superpower, but it doesn't strike me as a particularly useful one.2

  1. That being said, after a month of two or more comedy festival shows every week, I am actually officially ready for the comedy festival to be over. [↩]
  2. This is not, for those of you who keep track of my sporadic twitter stream, the same finger I cut on a peanut. [↩]

Funhouse (Pink — Funhouse)

24 April 2009 @ 21:34 | 2 Comments

and her fingernails are painted new

Dear Internets,

I love you. In fact, it's fair to say I'm addicted to you. But — forgive me — I'm beginning to wonder whether even you are worth wading through the mires of the Australian telephone infrastructure system, not to mention all the accompanying so-called service providers feeding on its carcass.

Additionally, I cannot help but contemplate the irony that is the communications industry being the epitome of communications failure.

Regretfully
Me

Angela (Missy Higgins — On A Clear Night)

21 April 2009 @ 21:51 | 1 Comment

i'm looking for an interruption

I've had a handful of questions of late as to what I'm working on, and it's slowly sunk into my addled brain that perhaps I'm not as clear about what's currently eating my brain as I could be.

There's two reasons for this. For one thing, I'm dreadful at titles. This shouldn't be a problem, really, as I do use working titles of a sort, even if it's just as generic as "the faerie novel". But, and this is where the second problem rears its head, maybe I never did get around to explaining the tags and categories I use on my posts.1

On my website, I2 use categories for stories, and tags for the stages of a story's life cycle. So a post which is filed under Shadow Queen and tagged as alpha draft would be about, at least in part, writing the first incarnation of Shadow Queen. Hopefully a quick glance at the archives should clear up any confusion on the tags/categories front.

I realise it does get confusing, particularly when I'm working on more than one manuscript at a time, in which case a post will have multiple tags and categories and it can be tricky to figure out which tag is paired with which category; or when I simply talk in the post about "the book". It also relies on you all understanding what I mean when I say "alpha draft" and "gamma draft" — wait, do you know what I mean when I use those terms? The writers probably do, but the non-writers maybe not. Well, that's a longer explanation, so I'll save that for a later post, if anyone's interested.

In the meantime, I should actually definitively answer the "What are you working on again?" question.

In short, I'm currently working on the alpha draft of the faerie novel, the working title for which is Away, Come Away. This is uncontracted; because I'm new to this writing gig, it's still best for me to finish a novel before I start trying to shop it around.

I'm also, at last, thinking about working on a third book in The Binding series. (I had to take a bit of a break after finishing delivering the second book, to recharge the batteries, which is when I started working on the faerie novel. Variety is as good as a holiday and all that.) By thinking about I mean I've spent a bit of time noodling around with plot ideas, that sort of thing. No actual words have yet been committed to paper or hard drive, which is why this particular book does not even have a working title.

And now, it's probably time to actually write.

  1. If you read the blog through the livejournal feed, I think they all come across as tags, so read the following with that in mind. [↩]
  2. currently — these things are always subject to change [↩]

I Don't Sleep, I Dream (R.E.M. — Monster)

18 April 2009 @ 10:10 |

crawling down the alley on your hands and your knees

I now own my very own coat.

In fact, the only reason I do not own two coats is that the hooded red toggle-fastening duffel-wannabe was not available in my size. So I only bought the one, a simple charcoal creature who is already trying to shed her buttons.1

I think I shall call her Zsa Zsa.

Truly, I must live in Melbourne. How bizarre.

  1. Is it all coats who try to shed their buttons in the same unrelenting and incessant way cats shed hair? Or is it just me? Tess leant me a coat to stop me from dying over the past week, and I've handed it back to her missing at least two buttons. I can only find one button to sew back on for her. I am bad. [↩]

Diamond Dogs (Beck — Moulin Rouge)

17 April 2009 @ 8:01 |

i haven't learned the weather patterns here yet

Yesterday was 26°C and glorious. Today when I left the house, the wind was in a fury and the sky in the west was glowing a strange and ominous ochre, a glow which made me think the wind had snatched up the light of the sunrise and smeared it against the underbelly of the oncoming clouds in an attempt to disguise their ugly intentions. I am about to head home, and not entirely sure the house will still be there when I get arrive.

I am definitely buying a coat this weekend. (And maybe some boots.) (But definitely a coat. Or at least a heavy jacket.)

Cuando los Ángeles Lloran (Live) (Maná — MTV Unplugged)

15 April 2009 @ 17:06 | 3 Comments

geography. perhaps it should be part of the syllabus again?

To properly celebrate the move south, I spent Easter…back home. One of the perks of this arrangement was spending some time with Spawn, who can't quite tell my two younger brothers apart. "This are Ben," she told me as I pointed out one younger brother (not Ben, in actual fact). I pointed out the real Ben and she hesitated, perhaps sensing a trap, but soldiered bravely on: "This are… More Ben!"

The other perk of this arrangement was the availability of internet. Ah, bandwidth, how I've missed you! Enjoying the benefits of connectivity, I was stumbling videos and came across this gem: CNNNN's Next Country To Invade.

Around about the 0:48 mark people start putting pins into the map to demonstrate where the US should invade next.

Iran Korea Australia is screwed.

13 April 2009 @ 19:15 | 4 Comments
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